


Semi-Sweet

by lamardeuse



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-28
Updated: 2010-04-28
Packaged: 2017-10-09 05:17:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/83449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamardeuse/pseuds/lamardeuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's hands + chocolate.  Need I say more?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Semi-Sweet

Rodney had never been very good at resisting temptation, but he was doing all right when it came to John Sheppard. Sure, Sheppard was disgustingly gorgeous, had thick, black hair that styled itself on command, and could give prowling lessons to a Siberian tiger. Sure, he was unreasonably hot when carrying weaponry and seemed incapable of buying boxers that actually stayed _hidden_. Throw in a tendency to be randomly brilliant in matters mathematical and you had an almost irresistible package.

And yet, Rodney resisted, because number one, Sheppard was straight, and even if he wasn’t he hadn’t picked a line of work that made hot gay sex a healthy pastime. Number two, while Rodney had no objections to lusting after unattainable objects, the actual mechanics of attaining one were still somewhat of a mystery. Number three, even if by some miracle the unattainable became attainable, he would then have to be naked with Sheppard, which while filling his head with all sorts of delicious possibilities nevertheless also filled him with trepidation. He hardly imagined that the tastes of gorgeous flyboy jock types ran toward love handles and pale, freckled Canadian asses.

Not that there was anything wrong with his ass, mind you. When he bothered to look, he noticed it was still—ah, holding up quite well, despite his headlong descent on the slippery slope to forty. At least all that traipsing through alien forests and deserts was good for something.

At any rate, the speculation was completely academic, because he was never going to be naked with John Sheppard, and he was certainly not going to think about his hands.

Dammit. So much for that.

Rodney had first noticed Colonel Sheppard’s hands—well, to be honest, the day they’d met, but he’d _noticed_ noticed them when John had placed them on the stone tablet device constructed by the Brotherhood of Fifteen. He supposed that was a little sick, considering that at the time he thought John was about to die, but he couldn’t help thinking at the time that John had beautiful hands, long and lean like the rest of him, prevented from being classed as graceful by the knobby, jutting wrist bones and the abundance of dark hair. But all the same, they were beautiful, and Rodney couldn’t help thinking that it would be a damned shame if Sheppard died before Rodney could get to know what those hands felt like on his skin.

And _that_ thought was crazy enough to make him realize he was venturing into dangerous territory, and then things had exploded and he’d been blinded and pissed off and the moment had faded in his memory until the next time he noticed Sheppard’s hands wrapped around a gun stock or a powerbar.

Really, he was getting too old for this shit.

    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

And then they hit the alien planet with the very friendly natives who had never heard of ZPMs but nevertheless possessed large quantities of the next most important commodity in the known universe: chocolate.

It wasn’t _real_ chocolate, of course, but it was close enough that Rodney nearly overdosed on the smell of it as they approached the village. The quantities brought back on the _Daedalus_—equal to about one bar per month per person—were simply inadequate in Rodney’s opinion, never mind that people tried to argue there were more important supplies that had to take precedence over his need for sugar.

  
— “Hello,” Rodney had said to Zelenka as two burly Marines unloaded a _ping-pong table_ from the ship’s hold after its last run. God, just on weight _alone_, that had to be at least two hundred Caramilk bars. “Who _sets_ these priorities?”

“The top minds of the US military,” Zelenka answered solemnly.

“We’re all doomed,” Rodney groaned.—

  
The Pegasus galaxy version of chocolate wasn’t quite up to Nestle level, but its quality did match, say, those cheap hollow Easter bunnies you got from your grandmother, who bought them in bulk at the Zellers for all the grandkids. At least it wasn’t overly sweet, and it had a delicate scent of almost-nutmeg underlying the chocolate aroma, and they melted it and stirred it over open fires in huge vats that made Rodney want to dive right in and wallow in it.

Strangely enough, that’s not far from what the natives encouraged them to do. Part of their greeting ceremony involved the presentation of deep, ceremonial bowls of the warm, melted chocolate, and it was considered the highest insult if you didn’t immediately chow down and consume the whole bowl.

Rodney had no problems with that. Really.

“They didn’t give us any spoons,” Ronon murmured, eyeing his own bowl suspiciously.

“Oh please, two months on Atlantis and you suddenly have table manners?” Rodney demanded. Ronon bared his teeth at him.

“Now, kids, play nice or you won’t get any dessert.” Sheppard looked down at his bowl. “Although if this is the main course, maybe dessert is broccoli. Or Brussels sprouts.” He shuddered.

Teyla and Ronon exchanged puzzled glances.

“Never mind,” Sheppard muttered. And with a smiling nod to their hosts, he took his index finger and dipped it in the chocolate, then drew it to his mouth and sucked it clean, his cheeks hollowing.

Rodney’s groan of lust was drowned out by the applause of the natives, who then proceeded to plunge their entire hands into their own bowls.

“What the hell,” Sheppard said, copying them.

Rodney closed his eyes, his formidable intellect burned to a crisp at the thought of Sheppard. Licking and sucking chocolate. Off his hands. Repeatedly.

He was so screwed.

    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

“Rodney.”

Rodney stumbled to a halt outside the hut he’d been assigned. He’d been this close to escaping.

“Yes, Colonel,” he said wearily, turning. Sheppard looked—

—oh, hell, he looked gorgeous, just as he always did. Unfortunately, he now also looked edible.

_If this really were Easter, I’d start with the ears,_ Rodney thought semi-hysterically.

“You okay?” Sheppard asked, taking a step closer.

Rodney folded his arms. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Sheppard took another step. He was nearly close enough to touch. God. “You left the ceremony pretty quickly. And you didn’t eat all of your chocolate.”

“If I’ve caused an irreparable diplomatic incident, I—”

“Nah, it’s okay. I gave the rest of your bowl to Ronon. They didn’t notice.”

“Oh. Good.” Rodney shifted on the balls of his feet. “Well, it’s been a long day—”

Sheppard took the last step into Rodney’s personal space, then took a deep breath and blurted, “You were looking at me. At my hands.”

Rodney blinked. “You—I—” he spluttered, mind racing as he scrambled for an explanation “—that’s nonsense—”

“It’s not nonsense, Rodney,” Sheppard insisted. “Just admit it.”

“I—I—all right!” Rodney hissed. “Fine. Although how anyone could be reasonably expected to keep their eyes off such a _pornographic_ display of—” he flailed his own hands “—pornography—is beyond me.” He shut his eyes and stuck out his chin. “So get it over with. Punch me in the nose, or do whatever you need to do to satisfy your wounded masculinity, but don’t hit me hard enough to concuss me, because this expedition cannot afford for me to suffer even the smallest amount of brain damage.”

After a moment in which no punching happened, Rodney cracked open an eye. Sheppard was standing there exactly as before, only there was one of those insufferable lopsided smiles plastered to his face.

“Well?”

Sheppard kept on smiling. “I’m not going to hit you, Rodney.”

“All right,” Rodney said slowly, opening the other eye. “What are you going to do?”

“This,” Sheppard said softly, leaning forward to press his lips to Rodney’s.

Rodney closed his eyes again. Sheppard’s hand was gliding over the back of his neck, fingers splaying against his skin, and his mouth tasted like nutmeg and dark promise and every holiday Rodney had never enjoyed until now.

When they parted, Sheppard grinned at him, and Rodney’s worries about the tastes of gorgeous jock flyboy types melted away.

Because John Sheppard grinned like _a big dork_.

“You did that on purpose,” Rodney accused. “All that licking and…”

“Sucking?” John supplied helpfully. Rodney shivered, and John’s hand tightened on the back of his neck. “Yeah. I was tired of wondering if you were looking at me the way I thought you were looking at me.”

“I wasn’t aware I was that subtle about it.”

“Yeah, you were, actually. It was really out of character for you.”

Rodney glared at him.

“I can get more chocolate,” John offered.

“Oh, God,” Rodney moaned. “Yes, please.”

John gave him one last bruising kiss, then shoved him toward the hut and sprinted back to the meeting hall. Rodney dove inside and began stripping off every stitch of clothing he was wearing.

He’d been right all along. You could _never_ have too much chocolate.

  


    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

“Hey.”

Rodney released Sheppard’s left index finger with a _pop _as he felt his cheeks flame.  Thank goodness it was still pitch dark inside the hut.

“‘Chudoin’?” Sheppard asked him sleepily. 

“Um,” Rodney said intelligently.  “I don’t believe in wasting chocolate?”

Rodney didn’t need a light to know that Sheppard was grinning again.  “Mmmm,” John agreed, his free hand finding the back of Rodney’s head and stroking gently through his hair.  “Y’right.  Be a crime to waste it.”

Rodney pushed himself up on an elbow and, finding Sheppard’s mouth with his own fingers, stole a little of that grin for himself.  Then he resumed his work until there was nothing left under his tongue but Sheppard’s skin and his sighs and his beautiful, almost-graceful hands.

**Author's Note:**

> First published October 2005.


End file.
